The fish sometimes become caught in the nets of trawlers which is how they are brought to the surface.

The fish is exceptionally rare and is found off the coast of New Zealand and Australia where it lives at depths of between 600 and 1,200m

Living so deep there is very little food for the blobfish to eat so it has to maximise what energy it does have.

Normal fish have what is known as a swim bladder to control their buoyancy but the blobfish becomes buoyant from its gelatinous skin.

Dr Alan Jamieson of Aberdeen University says that this 'gel' like appearance of the blobfish looks very different in the deep sea:

"When the fish is dead all the gel relaxes because it’s not in water anymore and it’s not buoyant any more.

"It’s now in air and that’s why it looks so sad and squished and blobby."

Jamieson is one of the few to have photographed the fish in water earlier this year using specialised deep-sea equipment.

A Blobfish in the wild. (DR ALAN JAMIESON/OCEANLAB)

He says the most remarkable thing about the blobfish is how little scientists know about the species.

"You never see them in numbers greater than one. Obviously they don’t get trawled very often but they are definitely there so you wonder how as a population do they function. They don’t hang around in schools. How do they reproduce? What do they eat, how old are they?"

It is not even known why exactly they are native to Australia and New Zealand. However scientists do know that Blobfish belong to the psychrolutidae family and are closely related to sculpins which like a little like tadpoles.

While the blobfish might now have an unfair reputation, it is hoped that the recent publicity will allow scientists to find out more about them and perhaps even increase the amount of blobfish in the sea.

The 'ugly' vote was orchestrated by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, which aims to raise awareness of creatures who are largely ignored because they are not 'cuddly' enough.

Professor Cox, who supports the campaign, said: "There are too many people trying to save cute animals. They get all the press, and all the attention.